Starfight Final

Starfight Final 1.1.0 is the last public build of A. Takano's side-scrolling arcade shooter for the Classic Mac, distributed from cbstudio on So-net. You pilot a single spaceship across five power-up driven stages, defeating waves of enemies and a boss fight at the end of each. Macintosh Garden classes the series as "a Defender clone from Japan."

Arcade-Style Side Scrolling

The author's own description is direct: control your ship, shoot the enemies that appear, and grab certain items to upgrade your firepower. Five stages each cap with a boss encounter, and the structure is squarely in the late-90s shareware shmup tradition rather than anything more elaborate.

What Changed In 1.1.0

Version 1.1.0 added automatic color-depth switching and tweaked some of the in-game graphics. Earlier 1.0.x releases focused on speed optimization, additional graphical polish, and a new demo stage. 1.0.1 was the first public release.

English And Japanese Builds

The Info-Mac archive carried the English-language build (STARFIGHT-FINAL(E) 1.1.0). A Japanese build was hosted separately on Takano's site. The game predates the Starfight II sequel that Macintosh Garden tracks on the same page.

Running It

Takano lists the requirements as a 68(LC)040 or PowerPC Mac, 3 MB of free RAM, MacOS 7.5.3 or later, and a 256-color display. Macintosh Garden confirms compatibility from System 7.0 through Mac OS 9, with the M2GE engine and clean emulation under SheepShaver, Basilisk II, and Mini vMac II.